During the summer of 2013, award-winning Chicago producer/director Joseph R. Lewis made a discovery significant to art history. A neighbor of his had mentioned some old boxes filled with “dolls” housed in a dilapidated building. What he found were several rooms overflowing with a variety of free-standing hand-painted scenery, staging equipment, props, and a considerable number of antique wooden chests. Stuffed inside the chests were, in fact, not dolls but finely detailed, elaborately costumed, exquisitely hand-carved marionettes. With his team at The Underground Multiplex, he decided to pursue the mystery of these marionettes. The search eventually led to Ralph Kipniss, the company founder and master puppeteer whose story is fascinating and tragic…